Playing GM: On Hiatus

While I have been gone from the blog, I have been killing time playing OOTP 8 (Out of the Park 8) baseball. It is a fun, general management game that involves the running of a MLB or Minor league franchise. Scouting talent, setting contracts, trading, drafting, simulating games or playing them through strategically. It is fairly true to form - operating 4 teams of 25-35 players, acquiring and developing talent on a fixed budget (by ownership) while trying to win the World Series.

Anywho, I got caught up in that and my own fantasy team. (Well, not really, it's in 3rd out 12 teams. But I have plans!!!)

As a result, we the addicted are going to take a break from blogging for 1 week. I won't be just doing baseball, but I just haven't quite got the right tone going in my head to write some long diatribe on politics (Jeremiah was a bullfrog), gas prices (market vs. taxes), sports (Roger Clemens playing dodger with a old flame) or other crisis (attacks, deaths and mayhem around the world.)

So, I hope you don't think I'm a flake. I am....different. 7 years since my 1st day in the clink, I got pretty down, and so avoidance was easy to seek. (Plus, I've been so broke, a teenager has more cash than I do.)

I'll be back in time for my Grandfather's 82nd birthday and Grandmother's 80th.

So, be well John and Jessica Spartan!!!

Final Rough Draft: It's alive, alive!!!

Like a crazy (and sometime angry) scientist, I got those files up at Wordpress. I should have done that first. Easier. Let the blog site take the blame for the screw ups.

So, my little sister of a blog site, that is actually quite the looker once you get past the generic layout and sparse postings, has the goodies I promised to like 20+ emails on Christmas Eve.

Deepcenterfield.wordpress.com has all 3 files of Bringin' Gas and Dialin' 9: 100 Years of Professional Baseball Development (1908-2007).

I hate to be such a book whore. I mean, books should be discovered at Amazon or Barnes and Nobles since that is their natural habitat...Yeah, right!

To get past that, I think it will be very difficult to ever publish what I wrote.

For one, editing!!! I suck at it. And I need to do a ton of it.

Two: Finding that "special editor" that is on crack, smokes dope on the regular and has flushed his career down the toilet, and therefore, has nothing to lose by promoting a novelty act that is my 3-ringed, hell-on-wheels circus act. Good Luck on that.

Three: Would anyone but a baseball freak want to read it? You can always pick up ESPN's Baseball Encyclopedia or Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract to fill you need for all things concerning baseball. And they have the staff to properly analyze things I've only begun to look at.

Plus, they get Stats, Inc. to do the difficult work of compiling just how many times a mediocre pitcher pitched in below 50 degree weather on a Tuesday while his wife was engaged in a trist with the garbage man. (I'm saying 4 times out of 17...)

Four: Lastly, who pray tell am I to espouse dangerous theories such as Steroids were not the sole reason for the power explosions in the 1990's? What are my credentials? I am the FNG on the block, and people don't like the FNG. Putting my stamp and two cents on the topic, so that's like 43 cents???, is risky and publishers don't like risky. Bankable as in DO-RE-ME or Benjamins is more their modus operandi. (Amazon posted a big holiday of book selling.)

For me, I am not out for the money but the pleasure of seeing my work published.

I could go to a Vanity Press - yikes! - and that would assuage my desires of publication at a price. Not really the point of doing the work.

But the prospect of someone picking up my work and saying, "Yeah, this guy did some work on this. And he's not like every ESPN talking head. He did not tear down baseball players. He loves the sport..." That would be, pardon me, Fucking Cool.

Later on!!

The baseball book: Here's a whole bunch of it - draft form

For those who actually like reading online PDFs, here's a link to Bringin' Gas and Dialin' 9: 100 Years of Professional Baseball Development (1908-2007). It is not necessarily the lastest and greatest, but it includes all the chapters, appendices, structure and most of all, the research I did. For those who find baseball a bore, I understand. I don't expect you to digest a subject that upsets your stomach. (But if you look close, I included plenty of pictures, charts, graphs, tables that assist or liven the project up.)

There is plenty more I can do (as the linked post relates), but I think you can follow the structure of the book and understand what I was trying to accomplish.

Since more people stop by this site, I felt this might be a good way to get out the word. (In case I find a crackhead editor/publisher that wants it.)

I appreciate any feedback, complaints, or suggestions. In fact, unlike many authors, the more pointed the criticism or complaint, the more likely I am to reflect on it, possibly revised or investigate it.

(To get ahead of a complaint: the pictures are from various websites listed either in the Preface or the Bibliography. My placing of a copyright on the work is not legit:This is a draft. This is a forum to vet any concerns about the analysis/structure or mistakes....not to find a way to ruin a project before it gets published. Lawyers need not apply to this job.)

Realize this:
1) I used the local library for the research. This means, whatever the lending library had or I could access online, I used best I could.
2) No interviews or trips to Cooperstown (MLB Hall of Fame) or Kansas City (Negro League HOF). So, I don't get the words that I would have respectfully inserted from the original source. I could never leave "my post" because I was not properly relieved of my duties...(Mil people will get that.)
3) I did the bookstore reading too. However, once I lost my laptop's usage, hand writing notes was considered inefficient. Plus I could remember the gist of 80% of what I read.
4) Conflicting sources. As always, the stories told are not always the same, author to author. Many, many conflicts arise, even in 2007, over what exactly happened, whose fault was it or why was something done. Baseball has this problem in spades....The most vocal people usually win.

Enjoy Bringin'!!!!!